


huzzah

by AtlantisRises



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dealing With Trauma, Found Family, Gen, quiet moments, spoilers for episode 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 05:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13804518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlantisRises/pseuds/AtlantisRises
Summary: The tiefling. Mollymauk. Bryce has been watching him not-quite-hover all night. He’s been drinking and carousing and reading cards for some of the younger townsfolk but he never drifts far from the stubbled, dirty-haired human and the little halfling girl who is almost certainly not a halfling.***OR: Our heroes take care of each other in the aftermath. Watchmaster Bryce watches.





	huzzah

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an anon prompt on tumblr:
> 
> _"some group protectiveness. Like, today Beau fell down a hole and could have died, Nott and Jester almost legit died, Caleb is having a PTSD moment. Like, gimme Molly and Fjord being mother hens taking care of the smol ducklings."_
> 
> It sort of turned into something else but here it is.

Bryce resists the urge to curl in around the wound. It’s already closed, but it hurts in that specific way that magically healed wounds hurt, a sort of sharp tugging pain woven in like stitches through the dull, throbbing ache of their left side. They slouch a little in their chair. They force themself to sit up straight. They really, really, really would rather be in bed right now. They cannot, in good conscience, leave this party. It is their duty to be here.

Honestly, though, the gathering in the center of town feels more like a wake than anything else. People are singing and dancing and drinking, yes, but it’s in that blurry, emotion-drunk way that comes just after something horrible has passed. The air feels hot and close and damp and everything is heavy with drums and the scent of ale. 

The halfling woman across the table from Bryce is smiling, swaying, humming quietly along to the music, but her face is wet with tears. Her father, Bryce knows, was in among the corpses carted back from the mines. Her son is out among the dancers in the middle of the square. She’s smiling, yes, but she hasn’t taken her eyes off him once. 

Bryce wants to reach out to her, to tell her that things will be okay now, but they don’t want to lie, and anyway they’re only halfway certain of her name (Something Greenbottle. Sarah, probably. The father’s name was Owen.) They stay quiet. They stay put. Tonight is a night for survivors, and the most they can do is their duty.  

(Four years. Four  _ years _ . This was never supposed to be  _ their _ place,  _ their  _ town.)

Bryce stiffens again, and settles again, shifting a bit to lean some of their weight against the side of the table. They shake off the thought of their hometown on the other side of the empire and the niece who must be the same age as Sarah’s boy by now. They take a swig of ale. A flash of purple catches their eye.

The tiefling. Mollymauk. Bryce has been watching him not-quite-hover, but, well….circle, all night. He’s been drinking and carousing and reading cards for some of the younger townsfolk but he never drifts far from the stubbled, dirty-haired human and the little halfling girl who is almost certainly not a halfling. 

Those two won’t be seperated. The human has his back to the center of the square, where the fire and the dancing and the music are. His shoulders are hunched and they have been all night; Bryce doesn’t think they’ve heard him speak since the whole ragtag mercenary group returned from the mines. The girl—and yes, okay, she is definitely a goblin, and Bryce is not at all certain how to feel about that, but gods, she’d tried to chase down the retreating pack of gnolls  _ by herself _ on the night of the invasion—the girl is curled up around his arm. She prods at him occasionally, as if to wake him. 

At one point she leaves the table, and this is the first time Bryce sees the human lift his head all night. Mollymauk is by his side before he can do much more than stand up and call out, and Bryce watches the two of them bend their heads together; Mollymauk’s hand comes up to press a bit on the human’s shoulder, easing him back down into his seat. 

The goblin returns a minute later with two mugs of ale in hand. The human takes one and sets it aside and his hands hover over her shoulders, like he’s fighting the urge to pat her down for injuries. The firelight flickers in his eyes. The three of them—human, tiefling, goblin—huddle close at the little wooden table, and Bryce looks away. 

Sarah Greenbottle is still swaying gently across the table from him, her eyes locked on her son. Bryce stands.

“Would you like anything?” they ask, gesturing towards the little outdoor bar with their empty mug. Sarah startles. She looks at them for just a second, and looks curiously down into her own mug, before shaking her head. 

“No thank you, Watchmaster,” she says softly. “I’m fine.”

None of these people are fine. Bryce heads over to the bar.

Another one of the mercenaries is leaning hard against it. Bryce remembers this one’s name: Beauregard. She’s human, angular and lithe-limbed and dressed all in loose blue garments. She is also spectacularly drunk. 

Bryce orders more ale around the other side of the bar and watches her warily. She’s guzzling from a massive tankard, and as soon as she’s done she lets it fall onto the bartop with a dull thud and calls for a refill. 

There’s a  _ look  _ on her face, a tension around her eyes and her mouth, that Bryce is intimately familiar with. It’s something like fear, rolled up in anger and diluted with enough alcohol that it sloshes and splashes and becomes impossible to hold in place. Bryce has felt a twist of the same in their own gut all night. Beauregard is practically shaking with it, and she looks beat to shit besides. Bryce doesn’t know all of the details of what happened in the old mines, but they wonder now if it might have been worse than they had imagined.

Or maybe she’s just young. She looks very, very young. 

Bryce takes their ale, and takes a step towards her.

“Ah,” says a voice at his ear. “Hello. I do not think she will be needing your help right now.”

Bryce jerks. The motion tugs at their just-healed wound and the sudden stab of pain makes them hiss. The other tiefling—Jester—turns to smile serenely at them.

“Look,” she says, and points with her chin.  

The last member of the mercenary party, the vaguely orcish man with the deep voice and the patchwork leathers, has come up beside Beauregard. He puts one hand on her shoulder, steadies her when she leans a little too far towards him, and gently pulls the tankard from her hand with the other. 

“Awwww,” sings Jester beside him, her lilting accent drawing the word out into two distinct syllables. “Beau is getting cut off.” 

Sure enough, the half-orc puts the tankard down just out of Beauregards reach and motions to the bartender over her shoulder. He is given something in an earthenware cup, nods his thanks, and then presses the cup into her hands.

“She never drinks enough water,” whispers Jester conspiratorially. She’s leaning way into Bryce’s space now, and Bryce isn’t sure how to politely extract themself. “She always wakes up with, like, these reeeeeeally  _ bad  _ hangovers, and then she gets all cranky, and then she and Molly bitch at each other all morning and it  _ sucks _ .” 

“Ah,” says Bryce, who can sympathise. “Is she alright, though? Besides the ale.”

“I mean, she did fall down a hole,” says Jester, who has somehow pulled a donut out of nowhere and is taking dainty little bites around her words. She looks at the donut and not at Bryce and her voice dips a little lower when she adds, “and then she tried to help Nott and there...there was a lot of blood. Like. A lot.” 

They raise their eyebrows, waiting for her to continue, but she doesn’t. On the other side of the bar, Beauregard has slumped down against her companion. The firelight flickering around them picks out a row of nasty, darkening bruises running up her arm. 

“I healed Nott and she is okay now, I think,” Jester says into the long silence. She has finished her donut, and is licking powdered sugar off of her thumb. “I do not know about Caleb. He is acting weirder than usual.”

By process of elimination, Caleb and Nott must be the human man and the goblin. Bryce takes a long swig of their ale and says, “your other friend is watching over them, I think.”

“Ah,” says Jester, finally meeting their eyes. Hers are sharp in a way that surprises them. “You saw that too? It is surprising, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Molly is better than he looks, I think.”

An odd way of putting it, but from what Bryce has seen she isn't wrong. Still: “have you all not been traveling together long?” 

They all seem...something. Pulled-together, maybe, like there are threads woven between them. They had traipsed back into Alfield all leaning on one another, the tieflings in front and Caleb clutching Nott’s hand in the back, with a cart full of corpses and a manticore’s head trundling along behind them.   

Jester shrugs. “I have known Fjord the longest,” she says, motioning again with her chin at the half-orc man. “And then Beau. And I think that Nott and Caleb have been together a long time also. But we all just met each other in Trostenwald, and also Molly.”

And speak of the devil—but oh, no, that’s an awful joke—Mollymauk comes sashaying towards them, two empty mugs in one hand and a third in the other. He smiles at Jester and Bryce, and it shows a lot of teeth but doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

Tired. Bryce is tired, too.

“Your people,” says Molly to Bryce—and Bryce resists the urge to say, no, not my people, I’m not from here— “really know how to party. Or mourn. Or both at once, which is really the only good way to do it.” He places the mugs on the bartop with a little flourish and leans into Jester. She is just the right height to tilt her head into the crook of his neck.

Bryce considers the comment, and considers getting mad about it, but Mollymauk is right. It’s a startling thing, to see people dancing in the firelight between the burned-out shells of their homes, but it feels right. 

Bryce thinks of Nott curled up against Caleb’s side, and about Sarah Greenbottle, watching her son dance. They look over Mollymauk’s shoulder at where Fjord has lowered Beauregard onto a bench and is clinking his own tankard against her water mug.  

They think about Mollymauk himself, dust-covered and bleeding from several tiny gashes, singing out “all hail the conquering heroes! Huzzah!” as he led a motley crew of mercenaries and survivors through the town gates.

Sarah Greenbottle had been among the first to rush out. She had found her father’s body in the cart, and she had wept, and then townspeople had pressed in around her and they had wept too, over returned loved ones and corpses and grieving friends. And now there was dancing.

Bryce lifts their mug, tilting it first towards Jester and then towards Molly. “A night for survivors,” they say, “and absent friends.”

“And ears,” says Jester, and Mollymauk snorts and bumps her with his hip. He lifts his mug and clanks it against Bryce’s.

“A night for survivors,” he says, “and tomorrow to come.”

And they drink.

**Author's Note:**

> We haven't seen too much about Watchmaster Bryce's character except that they dislike imperial politics, they're tired, and they're Trying as Hard as They Can so I dunno why I tried to write from their POV but here's this.


End file.
